City Commission Approves Shifting Bond Funds and Exploring Financing Options
Decatur Metro | September 8, 2010Last night, the Decatur City Commission unanimously approved City Manager Peggy Merriss’ suggestion of repurposing the remaining $3.7 million in Public Works bond funds to help build the Decatur Recreation Center and authorized her to explore other financing options to fund renovations to the unfinished projects from the 2006 bond referendum (Rec Center, Fire Station #1, Public Works).
Life intervened for me and I couldn’t attend the meeting, but the DNO and InDecatur have reports.
Of particular note were comments by Commissioner Jim Baskett who praised the City Manager for figuring out a way to fund the unfinished projects, and made clear that unlike some of his constituents, he was not “caught by surprise” by the need for more funds, since some projects – like McKoy Pool and Fire Station #2 – ended up costing more than anticipated.
Baskett also confirmed my suspicions that the Commission wasn’t willing to support funding these unfinished projects with a millage increase.
According to the DNO, both Commissioner Baskett and Mayor Floyd admitted that there may have been a communication breakdown in alerting the public that some of the bond projects were taking on increased costs that might affect the completion of other projects down the road.
Latest from Decaturish
Can anyone tell me what this all means for the Oakhurst Village improvements that were approved some years ago? Seems as I hear about the new McDonough improvements happening sooner, even though they were approved later. No need for a recap of the bond referenda related to those improvements or a lengthy exposition on how Dancing for Dollars affects the propsects for my little corner of Decatur’s improvement; just looking for a date. Thanks!
http://decaturnewsonline.com/news/article_4bbcadd2-abc7-11df-96d4-001cc4c002e0.html
In case there’s not enough to be annoyed with GDOT about in this case, I’d like to note that if the project had broken ground in Jan ’09 it MIGHT have been close enough to completion not to interfere with BBBFest that year and probably would have been finished before the Oakhurst Art & Music Festival in October. If they begin next June or July, then both of those events will be seriously affected–maybe obstructed altogether. Honestly, I can’t think of any entity I despise more than GDOT.
Question: Are the projects under discussion now (Candler/College/RR, McDonough/College/RR, etc.) subject to getting caught in the same GDOT quagmire?